Tags
family, homesteading, life, photography, small farm, spring, toddler
And suddenly it’s green. It happens all at once, and every year I forget the immediacy of unfurling leaves and popping green until that moment when I look up and see the sunlight catch the color anew.
The farm is unfurling into May, too. 10,000 onions, 700 feet of salad greens, 600 feet of spinach, 400 feet of tomato plants and snap peas, plus kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, carrots, beets. We are in with our whole hearts and bodies now.
This little boy of mine is in it, too, learning to slack line with his Papa, learning to walk in the pathways instead of on the garden beds, and learning to be gentle with transplants. When he tried grabbing the tomatoes, I said, “Be gentle with the plants. Give them love,” to which he responded by bending down, softly brushing the leaves and saying “looaahhh”
Now even the grass gets loves from Waylon.
The birds, too, command his attention. Crows, ravens, carrier hawks, red-winged blackbirds, robins, even a heron landed in a tree to scout our pond the other day, and Waylon announced it all, saying “toot toot toot” to show us the birds.
And now he is pointing out the window, saying “side, side” and so it’s time to close the computer screen and go out with him into the day.
You know you’re raising him right when the outside natural world is more exciting than a glowing screen.
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Yes! Though when music is playing from the computer, he does love to go over and bounce in front of the screen…still, “side” trumps computer 🙂
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You are giving him great experiences, love that age 🙂
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Beautiful!!!! One day he will teach you back (well, he already is). I was making sounds at a calf so he looks at me and I can take better picture, my four year old boy says: Mommy, stop it, be gentle to the baby cow, she just wants to sleep.
Oh how good that earth looks to me. 🙂
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I can’t count how much he’s taught me already. Perhaps the best thing is the how he slows me down and opens me up to so much wonder again.
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Gentle with the plants. An endless educational path 😉 Now if we could just convince them that tomatoes and strawberries are really best when they’re allowed to turn red!
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